Sometimes You Just Can’t Win
Catch-22 & the race card.

Mr. Clegg is general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity.
August 17, 2001 11:20 a.m.

here was an interesting article in the Washington Post on Thursday. Not the one headlined, "Conservatives Use Floggings As Way to Beat Back Reforms," which turns out to be, disappointingly, about Iran rather than Dick Armey and Tom DeLay.

No, I'm talking about the one reporting that a voter-rights group has sued Florida, "saying that parts of a new election reform law could return the state to its 'Jim Crow' past." The lawsuit was filed by an arm of Florida's ACLU on behalf of Charles Major Jr., a black voting-rights activist from Key West.

And what horrible things has the racist state of Florida done now? It has required that signs be posted at polling places that urge voters to "study and know candidates and issues," "bring proper identification to the polling station," and check their completed ballots for accuracy. Not only that, but it allows voters to cast provisional ballots if their names do not appear on precinct voter lists.

But aren't these exactly the kinds of reforms that the Left said it wanted, in order to ensure that every ballot counted and every citizen got to vote? True, but now the ACLU has decided that such reforms aren't such a great idea after all, because they assume that voters can read — a no-no under its reading of the Voting Rights Act — and give too much authority to poll workers.

More and more, this you-can't-win phenomenon characterizes the left's racial agenda.

Good scientists hold that, under the scientific method, a hypothesis must be "falsifiable." Karl Popper taught that, if a scientist has a hypothesis, but under no circumstances will he ever admit that it has been disproved, then he's being dogmatic, not scientific.

The same principle applies in the social sciences, too. Suppose a criminologist asserts that the death penalty does not deter murderers. If he always has explanations, and they are increasingly untenable, no matter what additional evidence contrary to his hypothesis is brought forward, then eventually it must be concluded that he is offering us not criminology, but an article of faith.

And this is true, finally, in politics as well. If Oliver Stone posits the existence of a vast right-wing conspiracy, and if the lack of evidence for such a thing proves only how sophisticated and sinister the conspiracy is — and never can demonstrate that it does not exist — then we are entitled to conclude at some point that we are dealing with a nut.

This is a worthwhile principle to apply to an apparent article of faith for the civil-rights establishment, namely that Republicans, conservatives, and pretty much everyone except for Al Sharpton and maybe Julian Bond is a racist.

A good example is the reluctance of many people to soften penalties for drug dealers. The civil-rights establishment reasons this way: Tough penalties for drug dealers mean more drug dealers go to prison; a disproportionate number of drug dealers are black; therefore, tough penalties for drug dealers are antiblack — and those who support them are, too.

But suppose instead Republicans had decided that we should decriminalize crack. (At the time that the current, stiff penalties for crack were put in place, incidentally, the charge was led by Charles Rangel, an African-American congressman from Harlem, and voted for by a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus.) Which of the following two reactions by the NAACP and Jesse Jackson would be more likely?: (a) Republicans are enlightened statesmen who don't want to throw black youths in jail; or (b) Republicans are racists who would abandon our inner cities to the ravages of drug addiction. Right — the latter.

Or take school choice. If the civil-rights establishment supported it and Republicans opposed it, the former would accuse the latter of racism, since why should poor/black children have fewer choices than rich/white children? Of course, the shoes are on the other feet — that is, the civil-rights establishment opposes school choice and Republicans generally favor it — but the Republicans are nonetheless still accused of being antiblack: They want to destroy the public-school systems where most black children go (most white children go there, too, but never mind).

I'm not the only one who has noticed this. Two African Americans have recently pointed out the same thing.

Columnist William Raspberry noted that, when Bill Clinton announced he was going to locate his office in Harlem, the New Black Panther Party decried the decision as part of "the white takeover of black Harlem." But if Clinton had decided not to move into a black neighborhood, Raspberry points out, he would have been criticized for that. If the background music in a TV ad is a black song sung by a black man, that's exploitation; if it's a black song sung by a white man, that's theft; if it's not a black song at all, whites are "disrespecting our genius."

John McWhorter — author of the brilliant Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America — uses a similar analysis in his recent review in The New Republic of Donald Bogle's Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television. McWhorter shows that, no matter what roles African Americans play on television, Bogle is offended. If a black woman is nurturing, she is a "mammy"; if she is not, she is a "Sapphire." If a black man doesn't stick up for is race, he is "tokenism at its worst"; if he does, he is an "angry black man" or "other." Bogle is offended if young black singles on television are obsessed with sex, but of course young white singles are, too — and probably if blacks and whites acted differently, Bogle would also be offended. The networks can't win; their racism is unfalsifiable.

This problem is an important one for the Republican party. If Republicans cram the stage with African Americans at their convention, that's tokenism; if they don't, that's racism. If an appointed black is a conservative Republican, he really isn't a black; if an appointed black isn't a conservative, then he really isn't a Republican.

Now, I don't think that Republicans are biased, but my point is that those who disagree should ask themselves: What would Republicans have to do to convince us otherwise? If the answer is, they can't, then this really isn't fair. And, for everyone else, if the critics' accusation of racism is unfalsifiable, then the criticism has to be taken with a big grain of salt.